A duty is a type of tax that is often associated with customs, a payment due to the revenue of some type of entity such as a country or state, levied by force of law. In many instances, a duty is a kind of indirect tax on goods involved in international trade. As the World economy has grown, many merchants have customers located in a number of different countries. In particular instances, a merchant may receive several orders from a number of different recipients in a particular country. For example, a merchant located in France may sell men's clothing and may receive several Internet orders from customers living in the United States. In this instance, the merchant may take advantage of the cost of shipping one international shipment to the United States instead of many for the received orders and may package all the orders into one international shipment. Once the international shipment reaches its final destination country (e.g., the United States), the shipment is often received at an intermediary warehouse location where the individual orders are removed from the shipment and shipped to their final destinations within the country.
Often the international shipment must pass through customs upon arrival in the destination country in order to determine whether a duty is due on the articles in the shipment being imported into the country. In many instances, whether a duty is paid on an imported article is dependent on the value of the article. For example, in the United States, many international shipments valued under $200 are not subject to a duty and may be released under Section 321 of the U.S. Customs regulations with minimal requirements. However, in the case in which the merchant has packed all of the orders into one single international shipment that is addressed to one consignee (e.g., the intermediary warehouse) without any information on the individual orders inside the shipment and without customs physically inspecting the individual orders packed in the shipment, customs only considers the value of the entire shipment for purposes of determining the duty due on the international shipment. Therefore, if the value of all of the orders shipped in the shipment total more than $200, the shipment is subject to a duty.
Thus, a need exists in the art that allows for customs to consider each individual order in the single international shipment for purposes of determining whether a duty is due on each individual order without having to physically inspect each individual order in the shipment. Such a solution allows many of these orders to be exempt from being subject to a duty and, in many instances, helps to minimize the duty paid by the merchant and/or recipients.